From weddings to Whitlam

For over 40 years Ian Ward took photos for the Wimmera Mail Times, or the Horsham Times, as it was known as more than 50 years ago.

Long before the digital age there was the dark age. A time when photographers occupied the darkness of the developing room and worked without the illumination of the flash. They also had to master the art of engraving and work with large format cameras that took only 16 photographs at a time.

It was 1949 and it was Ian Ward’s first day on the job as the photographer at the Horsham Times.

It was a time that required not only expertise but also patience.

Even when the flash finally arrived, Ian had to wait 19 seconds before taking the next photograph.

"It was exasperating”, he exclaims.

This was a seven days a week job. And when the night was woken up by the sounds of the siren you picked up your camera.

He photographed finality: the car crashes, the fires and the funerals.

But he also captured celebration: of couples at their weddings, crops at harvest and children at play.

“I just recorded what was happening”, he said.

He was drawn to the uncertainty of the job and the lack of routine.

“You don’t know from one day to the next what is coming up”, he said.

Ultimately it was the people though, that kept him there for so long.

“You meet so many people”, he said.

He has met Prime Ministers, Governor Generals and even an astronaut.

Ian remembers Gough Whitlam being in Horsham to promote the “Don’t Rubbish Australia” campaign, he politely asked if Whitlam could pick up some rubbish that had been strategically thrown on the floor and he obliged.

Victoria’s Governor General Sir Rohan Delacombe was a frequent visitor to the Wimmera for his quail shooting trips.

Then there was the time Ian was at Longrenong Agricultural College photographing a demonstration of a tree getting blown up. Old trees were removed from paddocks using explosives.

“The charge blew the tree vertically like a rocket taking of”, he said.

He gave Buzz Aldrin a copy of the photo as he thought, "the fellas up in NASA might be interested in how we launch trees in Australia”, he laughs.

But he also captured ordinary people.

One photograph stands out and like most photographs there is a story beyond the frame. It is of a young girl sitting on the steps of a church. She is the flower girl at a wedding. Both the groom and groomsman had fainted, at the alter, so she was patiently waiting for things to resume.

It was these moments that he patiently captured.

Then just as the technology started to speed up, with the introduction of the digital camera, Ian retired in 1995.

Thank you to the Horsham Historical Society for supplying all the images. You can get in contact with them via email.